


FOREVER

by twowritehands



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth - All Media Types
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:38:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: To get away from the world, Marcus buys a cabin in the Highlands of Scotland. He wants a quiet life. Then he meets Esca who is a fierce, sparkly fairy king only three inches tall--except, of course, for one magical night a month.</p><p>Art by beederiffic included, slightly NFSW</p>
            </blockquote>





	FOREVER

**Author's Note:**

> written for The Eagle Reverse Big Bang and the lovely art prompt by beederiffic. First time ever participating in such a thing.

 

 

Marcus walks by moonlight. He has been to this glen so often by now, probably knows the way blindfolded. The stars and moon are out too, so it’s by their silver light on the snow-covered ground that he makes his way to the rendezvous point.  His heart is racing, his breaths are thin puffs on the clean air, and he can’t help but run when he trusts the terrain. He’s as excited as ever.

This is the night.

Above him, the moon hangs sideways, nothing but a thin line arcing in a pregnant swoop. Esca’s moon--or so Marcus has come to think of it: _their_ moon. Most of it is dark but for the silver slither... And tomorrow will be the new moon, no light at all. How fitting.

It's a pretty good symbol for the love between a man and an immortal creature of magic and power; one silver flash in an otherwise dark, complicated, completely impossible relationship that has... _somehow_...worked. Well, so far.

Most of the time it feels like a total lapse of reason, allowing darkness to eat him up… but every single moment of it feels as hauntingly beautiful as that thin waning crescent moon hanging above him.

This moon is theirs because this is the only day they have, once a month, to be together.

Long distance relationship.

Sort of like if Neil Armstrong had fallen in love with a little moon-rock goblin up there and they became exclusive, but only actually saw each other whenever NASA could afford to rocket him up there...

Only, it’s not on the moon, it’s in a glen in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and it’s not with a goblin, it’s with a fairy. It’s real, and it’s possible, and Marcus doesn’t have to do anything in his life ever except be in this glen under this moon to meet him.

Esca.

}{

_“Marcus, for God’s sake, there’s nothing up there!” Uncle cried over the phone that Marcus held pressed between his head and shoulder as he unpacked boxes of his books. “Why did you move to northern Scotland anyway? There are plenty of real estate opportunities nearer to civilization.”_

_“Well, I’m not looking for an investment. I need quiet. Solitude. Time to write my book, for real this time, no distractions.”_

_Uncle sighed. “Write.”_

_“Right,” Marcus chuckled. “Write.”_

}{

No distractions. Shivering from the cold, Marcus chuckles at the memory, now so far away, and shakes his head as he makes himself comfortable on his usual seat, an ice-cold rock that stays pretty dry out of the snow, shielded by a bigger rock that has green hair on it during the summer. He’s supposed to be writing; how easily his plans had backfired out here, in a cabin all by himself, utterly alone day in and day out. He almost went crazy.

Okay, maybe he _did_ go crazy, and this is...The writer shakes his head again, arms folded close to conserve heat in his many layers. His laugh is soft and drifts around for a minute like a snowflake. Fairies. Little blinking lights that live in trees-- but apparently only in the trees no human has ever touched.

Fairies. Intelligent beings which can only be perceived by humans as nothing but sparks of light, like a glint off a mirror; they’re there one moment, gone the next. Like smoke, or wind, or the color of the sky; impossible to hold.

Unless it’s the waning crescent moon.

“This is insane, Aquila,” Marcus says aloud to himself. “You’ve finally lost it.”

“You’re always doubting me,” comes a voice out of the dark, “After all this time.”

Marcus leaps to his feet, boots crunching in the snow, parka whispering under his flailing arms, heart lodged in his throat. He’s here.

}{

_A knock at the door scared the cat into a ferocious hiss before she bolted for the safety of the bathroom. Marcus looked up from his computer screen, surprised because he should have been able to hear any vehicles approaching the cabin yet hadn’t heard a sound. Looking back toward the bathroom where his pet had gone, he frowned and took off his reading glasses._

_He wondered if maybe the kitten he’d rescued from the wild had even had any notion of there being other humans in the world besides him. The thought made him laugh as he hurried to the front door to answer._

_He was concerned to find his insides were jumpy at the notion of actually talking to someone other than the cat—had he been alone for that long, already?  But he was quickly derailed of all thoughts about that by what he found on his doorstep. A man, young and strong._

_He was small, barely achieving Marcus’s chin in height but he stood proud with a sharp face, tawny uncombed hair falling down around his eyebrows and over his ears, flawless skin, glittering grey eyes, and a smirk in the bow of his lips._

_He was_ gorgeous _._

_Marcus lost his breath, just stared. This guy was … strikingly exquisite. Ethereal, even._

_He believed, in that moment, (though he wasn’t thinking on it directly because he wasn’t thinking at all) that all those depictions of angels being big strong, kind-looking men or tall and virginal women were wrong. Just wrong. They got is so, so wrong. Centuries of statues, instantaneously rendered pathetic._

This _was divine beauty: short stature, strength subtlety coiled like springs under unblemished skin, a frame that was shockingly petite yet sporting masculine characteristics like a sharply carved jaw, raspy with a new beard. And though kindness was there, it grappled with an intense, deathly darkness and as for virginal… well. There was hardly anything pure about this guy. There was wicked seduction in the very way he_ breathed _._

_Impishly experienced in all things errant as well as virtuous yet choosing the good, that’s an angel._

_The visitor raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow, shoving hands deep in the pockets of a long heavy coat tied around a narrow waist. “Aquila.” He spoke the name, less like a question and more like an accusation. His voice was velvety, soft but with an impact like a big bronze bell ringing through smoke._

_“Uh,” Marcus replied._

}|{

Esca is walking toward Marcus through the silvery night. It’s quiet. Not even wind. Not even a heartbeat in Marcus’s ears. Silent. Like an eclipse of existence outside of the two of them.

Seeing Esca in the flesh is always like that first time, a shock to the system. A redefinition of punch-drunk, _see Marcus F. Aquila 1980~Present. 6’1’’. Italian-American. Reclusive heir of his father’s empire. Writer._

Now in the dark and cold of just past midnight, Marcus has to remember himself all over again, remember that he _can_ speak. That he _can_ remember his name, his manners. He can be more than the guy who’s made to stare at Esca.

Marcus keeps waiting for it to be like, _meh. I’ve seen it._ Or to even just smile like an idiot and get tingles as he greets Esca’s familiar, elegant form. But instead it’s the same dazzling mind-implosion.

Whoa.

“Esca!” Marcus cries into the chilly night as he finally gets a grip. He sounds amazed, always does. Always is. And relieved, because he _wants_ to believe, but he has no faith. Only what he can touch, and see… otherwise he has too many doubts. No trust.

“Marcus,” the fairy man says.

Esca is near enough now as he climbs the hill that Marcus can see he is smirking, “You always have the same adorably bewildered look on your face. Every time.”

Marcus does think he’s starting to regain his speaking functions a little bit faster each time. Right now--already--he manages a huffed, “Well…” and then a stumbled, “You’re so beautiful,” before he finally gets a hold of his words. _His craft._ He sniffs against the cold, grinning at his extraordinary lover, “It’s impossible to remember this kind of beauty because it’s too much to memorize. So it gets me every time.” He laughs nervously, feeling tingles as Esca walks right into him, bumping lightly into him, forehead to his lips, “Every single time.”

Esca cranes back to look up at him, his eyebrow raised, an impressed expression which really doesn’t come around that often, “Elegantly and sweetly put. Thank you.”

Marcus unclenches his arm muscles and wraps them around Esca.

}{

_“Aquila.”_

_“Uh.”_

_Marcus stood there for god knows how long before he regained his wits enough to sputter, “Uh, yeah. That’s me. Who--um--_ wow _…_ ” _He was blatantly staring at the guy’s coat-shrouded but lithe body, like a total douchebag. He knew he was doing it but couldn’t stop. “You are?”_

_The unexpected and eerily handsome man wasn’t wearing shoes. It seemed too cold for that, but Marcus had this thing about seeing people’s bare feet (it seemed intimate to him, like being at home, at ease and free with yourself.) So he was too busy thinking about that than worrying about the temperature outside._

_Without invitation, the stranger moved liquidly right over the threshold and into the cabin. Marcus stepped aside without a moment’s hesitation to let him in and saw as he passed close by that--wait, what?-- sticking out of his reddish dirt blond hair were ears that tapered into points at their tops._

_Marcus thought Vulcan and then he thought Elven before he thought of obscure birth defects that probably shouldn’t be linked to science fiction or Tolkien until given permission to do so._

_“You can call me Esca,” he said as he looked around at all the improvements Marcus had made to the inside of the old cabin. “I’m your nearest neighbor.”_

_“Oh!” Marcus cried, suddenly at ease now that the mystery was solved. “Oh, it’s good to meet you. I was wondering if I had any. Neighbors, I mean. Um, can I take your coat?”_

_“No thanks.” Esca smiled at him then his grey eyes slid over to the desk and he frowned, moved with astounding grace across the room to tap the keys of the laptop there rather hesitantly like he was reaching out to touch a crocodile. He visibly relaxed when the screen didn’t snap closed on his fingers like jaws, “Haven’t seen one this small. It’s harmless.”_

_Marcus bolted over to self-consciously close the notebook and keep the text of the document on the screen private. “Well, I guess you guys don’t have a lot of Apple stores around here.”_

_Esca didn’t laugh, didn’t continue the subject. Instead, jumped right to a new one, “So have you gotten to explore the land yet?”_

_“Um--no. Not yet.”_

_Lovely grey eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, “Well if you do, I trust you won’t go making plans to put in parking lots or anything.”_

_Marcus frowned, thinking for the first time that this guy might not be cool just because he’s pretty, and for the first time he questioned why he just let Esca come into the house like that, “Uuuum, nope. No plans for parking lots to speak of. Just here to write my book.”_

_“My family has lived in these parts for a very long time,” Esca explained as if asked while he rooted through Marcus’s bookshelf, “I would hate to see the scenery change._ At all. _Understand?”_

 _It sounded like the threat it was but being a threat that wasn’t against any plans of Marcus’s, the writer just bobbed his shoulders to avoid an argument about who had a right to do what,_ _“Whatever. Like I said, I’m here to write, not to put in motels.”_

_“Good.”_

_Uneasy, Marcus went over to the window and looked out, “So did you walk here? I didn’t hear a car.”_

_“I don’t drive.”_

_“Right, well. Must have been a long walk.”_

_“I don’t live far, just one glen over.”_

_“Oh, really?” Marcus sounded causal but he was remembering those movies about people in the middle of nowhere getting uninvited visitors and then dying horribly. “I was told when I bought this land that it was just me for miles all around.”_

_Esca grinned up at him, “Well they would tell you that, because they don’t know I’m here.”_

_Marcus crossed his arms, fear falling away at the sight of a merry sparkle in those magnificent grey eyes, and, amused, he asked, “What, so you’re avoiding taxes?”_

_Esca nodded, “Staying away from cities, from people who don’t get me. I like doing my own thing.”_

_“I see.”_

_“And now you’re onto me about why I’m here.”_

_“Am I?”_

_“To ask you not to disturb my way of life. That means no construction sights, no weed killer, no signing contracts that allow for highway bypasses to cut through your property.”_

_“Yeah, key phrase there,_ my _property,” Marcus replied, still amused by this bossy little squatter with such an exquisite face and hard body. “If you want to save the land you should buy it yourself.”_

_“I don’t use money.”_

_“Of course you don’t.”_

_“So do we have a deal?”_

_“A deal?” Marcus snorted, “A deal implies you’re doing something for me in return for these favors.”_

_Esca’s eyebrow arched and his eyes dropped down Marcus’s whole body and then climbed back up to his face, so slowly. “Favors?” he asked, voice low like candle light, “You want to trade favors?”_

_Marcus gulped, took a step back, “Whoa, hey. I didn’t mean it like that. Jesus.” His heart was suddenly racing because the atmosphere had abruptly charged, felt like all Marcus had to do was give a green light and all sorts of naughty but wonderful things would start happening. Just like that. No questions._

_Esca bobbed his shoulders, grey eyes still lingering on Marcus’s body, “I’m open to a lot of things, Aquila. It’s important that we’re both happy in this arrangement. Let’s say it’s a deal if you promise to leave the highlands alone ,and I promise not to make your life difficult.”_

_“Okay…” Marcus answered, feeling uneasy again, “Well, we’ll work something out, I guess. But not--not sex favors” He thought this guy was too weird and he should definitely go. And in a completely contrasting but equally strong feeling, he also liked Esca and didn’t think he was dangerous. Charming, quirky._ Beautiful _. But not dangerous._

_There was an ethereal quality to him that Marcus was stunned by, hypnotized until he was aching. Esca’s voice was like a magnet and Marcus thought he was being silly to think the air around him tasted metallic like blood._

_“You were born in Rome,” Esca suddenly said._

_“What?” Marcus broke out of his thoughts, struggling to keep up with this bizarre subject change. “Yeah, Italy. But then my parents immigrated to America--how did you know that?”_

_Esca only grinned, shrugged. “Magic.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Well then, Roman. I’m happy_ you’re _the new landowner. This is going to work out in everyone’s best interests.”_

_“Why do you say that?”_

_“Because you like me and want to make me happy.”_

_Marcus huffed, looked down, feeling shy after being called out like that, “Yeah, well you’re certainly an interesting character.”_

_“Ah, wait until you get to know me. Then you’ll really be hooked.”_

}{

Their long string of I-Missed-You kisses break naturally, and Esca pulls back to look at Marcus more. He is smiling a very spectacular smile. It makes his nose and chin sharper, his cheek bones more defined, and his mouth becomes wide, pleasant, _warm_. He could be as human as he looked the day they met, if not for two things. The first, most obvious: wings.

His coat had hidden them at first. Now he keeps them on display for Marcus. Brittle, dry as paper, semi-transparent, made out of organic stuff that sort of glows in the dark, even sparks when it vibrates. Pretty freaking cool.

}{

_Their first kiss , several weeks after their first meeting, left Marcus wanting more so he took it, and it was freely given. He closed his heavy hands around Esca’s upper arms and delved into his splendid mouth, tasting his tongue, feeling his slick-clean teeth, breathing his breath. Marcus wanted to feel Esca's body under his coat. By then, Marcus had grown used to the sight of his neighbor in the long coat. When a thigh had flashed out at him once or twice, Marcus had realized Esca was naked under there._

_So it was weird he wanted to make out with him, having never wanted anything to do with nudists. And something about a nudist living in the highlands of Scotland didn't make sense, but Marcus was too distracted by the thought of nude Esca to notice._

_When the writer's hands strayed to the belt of the coat, Esca’s hand splayed firm in the center of Marcus’s chest and pushed him until their lips parted with a smack. And a string of spit. Marcus laughed, wiping it from his chin as Esca said, “I’m going to show you something and you’re not going to freak out.”_

_Marcus snorted, wary of punch lines, “Yeah. Okay.”_

_“I have your word?”_

_With a crease in his brow, Marcus made the Boy Scout pledge._

_Esca grinned impishly and deliberately stepped backwards out of his hold. There he stood, just out of arm’s length for a moment and then—he dropped his coat._

_Marcus didn’t hold his word. Not even a little bit. The Scouts would be so ashamed of him._

}{

The second part about Esca which destroys any illusions of humanity is fixable, but not really worth it: the wardrobe.

No longer attempting to keep his secret from Marcus, Esca is wearing a material that doesn’t make sense. It looks like nature, like leaves and stuff, but it feels like silk and is as durable as denim. The weirdest part is how it stays on. Marcus has had the pleasure of removing it plenty of times by now, yet he can’t say how it works. It’s like he just can’t remember. Or maybe it’s more like he really doesn’t care. If the garment comes to his attention at all it’s because he wants it to be gone. And then it is.

It covers Esca’s groin and nothing else, not even the wings of his defined hip bones. The grooves on his body there draw Marcus’ eye, then he appreciates the bareness of pale strong thighs and marvels, time and again, at how Esca’s bare feet have not left a print in the snow where he has stepped so fluidly, like he does now as he moves back out of his arms. Esca stands there looking up at Marcus, long wings still, dim, and silent, immortal eyes intent on him like he’s all that matters.

“You came.”

“Y-yeah,” Marcus is shivering, does a little dance on the spot for warmth, and his breath puffs out white. “Always. Duh. Why wouldn’t I be here?”

Esca laughs as he puts his arms around him again. Marcus pulls him close, as much for the intimacy as for the heat which the fairy radiates. Esca doesn’t feel the cold somehow, or more like the cold doesn’t feel Esca.

It’s part of why Marcus will gravitate more toward Not Believing This Is Real come the following days of seperation, when he’s alone again. _Something winter doesn’t know_? That can’t be right...

“God, I’ve missed you,” Marcus murmurs as he steps back to examine Esca again in the silver light of the night sky.

Esca’s strong, slender hands wrap around Marcus’ frozen mittens and tug. “Let’s get you in, and warmed up.”

They head back the way Marcus came, his boots stamping out his old prints and reversing them, toe to heel. He jogs along beside Esca, who glides weightlessly over the snow, walking on air right above the delicate crystals of snow on the ground. His wings, not strong enough to actually lift him into the air when he is this size, buzz at a comforting low frequency that reminds the man of baseball for some reason. Must be something about hot summer days.... Far away lawn mowers... mechanical fans propped in window sills set on high... bumblebees lumbering by in the humidity...

Organic light plays in Esca’s beating wings, yellowish, orangey; sometimes a faint blue. Sometimes little sparks actually pop off and burst like solar flares. Esca says it’s a temperature thing--body temp, not weather. Marcus believes it ever since that time, in the middle of summer, in a sunny spot on the kitchen floor, Marcus got these wings beating fast enough to emit red light and pops of burning fire.

That was just after Marcus got comfortable with the idea of incorporating the wings into the sex. At first he’d had to ignore them, but once he realized that touching them excited the fairy, the rest just fell into place. Now Marcus teases that he has always loved lightning bugs, but Esca insists that the light is what gives him power so it should be treated with respect.

“How long have you been waiting? You’re frozen,” Esca chides softly, buzzing around him, chasing off the cold with light.

“Not long,” Marcus promises. “Long walk--Fucking _cold_ tonight, man, winter _sucks_.”

It sucks for a hundred reasons but the first most basic is the fact that when it is this stupidly cold it’s too dangerous for Marcus to strip naked and fuck Esca right here in the glen like they have done in the warmer months. (They get only one day a month after all, they try to make the most of it.)

Locking his jaw against a teeth chattering shiver, Marcus pulls stinging air into his chest and coughs. Esca slows down, reaches over and puts a warm hand on the back of his frozen neck. Another shiver courses through the human, this one of desire. He sighs in semi-comfort.

“Thanks,” he sniffs, and they charge on, for the warm fireplace in Marcus’ shitty little cabin. He has moved practically everything with iron in it that he can out to a shed, in favor of making Esca more comfortable. That includes most electrical appliances like space-heaters. But Marcus is proud at how good he has gotten at chopping wood for their fires.

“So...?” Marcus says after he has marched ten strides and Esca has circled him like fourteen times in his little tornado of warmth. It’s making Marcus dizzy with the lights and everything. So with two bemittened hands, he catches Esca’s strong shoulders and makes him walk backwards for a minute. “Hang on, you’re making everything spin.”

“Sorry, Rudolf.”

“What?”

“Red nose,” Esca says cheekily tweaking the numbest part of Marcus’ face. They pause in a shadowed curve in the path, where the fairy's glowing wings glimmer like a candle.

Warm breath on his face is sharp like a knife against the numbness, but he can feel Esca’s lips stick lightly to his own with an electric pulse. It’s not a real electric pulse, but it makes Marcus think of two robots kissing in outer space. Suddenly he’s WALL-E, drifting off in a vacuum, totally dazed, and Esca has to drag him onwards.

“We’re wasting daylight, my love,” Esca says, pulling his arm out of socket. Marcus laughs because the sun isn’t even up yet. But he agrees, too, so he starts to jog again. They don’t have enough time.

}{

_“Why not just be human sized all the time?” Marcus asked from where he slumped lazily between Esca’s knees with Esca at his back, supporting his weight while they watched a stray flock of sheep in the meadows below their hill._

_“It’s very dangerous to be like this,” Esca replied, idly playing with Marcus hair. “Our magic is less subtle on this scale, harder to hide, so we could be hurt by people who don’t understand. People do truly horrible things to what they don’t understand.”_

_Marcus grunted, and as Esca’s fingers zig-zagged aimlessly through his short tresses, his thoughts went to the stories one hears about how homosexual men are sometimes hurt for the same reason._

_“And our wings are especially at risk,” Esca says, cutting into Marcus’s thoughts, “If they’re damaged at this size, they can’t be repaired.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Which is why only royalty is ever spelled this size and it only lasts for twenty four hours.”_

_Marcus’s attention wrapped wholly around his lover as he sat up in the grass, twisted to look at him incredulously, “You’re royalty?”_

_Esca’s smile was far from humble and wickedly amused, “I’m king of the fae. I told you, Marcus, this is_ my _land and I’m made this size in order to negotiate with whomever holds the deed. Of course I’m king. What did you think I was?”_

_“I don’t know," Marcus laughed, “some kind of negotiator. I don’t know.”_

_Esca grinned, ruffled his hair and pulled him back as he was, squeezing him tight, “I really love the way you are, Marcus.”_

_“The way I am?’_

_“The way you are,” Marcus could feel Esca’s shrug, “In everything you do. From thinking to speaking, to expressing emotion on your face. All of it. I love it.”_

_Marcus hummed in satisfaction, “I love the way you are, too.”_

}{

Huffing and puffing, Marcus stops his teeth from chattering and asks, “Right, so how’re things down there? Is the Council still giving you hell?” The Fae Realm isn’t necessarily _down_ , but Marcus imagines it is and Esca allows it.

Esca’s answer is a sigh, and a heavy one. The sound tells Marcus how much work he has to do today to lighten the fairy’s load with mind wiping sex—today is going to be _fun_.

“I felt like it took _ages_ to get here,” Esca groans. He doesn’t mean traveling. Esca lives in this glen, under the ground and in the trees. He’s talking about the Council and the Ceremony and the moon’s shape in the sky...it’s an ordeal, for a thumb-sized little bug man to be made this big.

It’s once a month, for politics basically. Esca protects the fae kingdom by maintaining good terms with the owner of the land. Right now, that’s Marcus, who shakes his head at fate.

And Uncle wanted him to get a condo on the beach.

Marcus stomps the snow from his boots and steps into the warmth of his cabin. He has left the fire burning, wanting the temperature to be right for stripping right away. Esca shuts the door behind them and Marcus starts pulling off his layers, still shivering.

The fairy king draws him closer to the crackling hearth, “Oh, I have missed you, Marcus.” Drawing him close, he feels how tense Marcus is, having still not thawed by the heat of the flames, so he chuckles, “But perhaps it’s best for your health if you wait here for me every moon until spring.”

“No,” Marcus huffs, as Esca shifts around until they are laying on the rug in front of the fire, Esca snug against his back to warm what the fire can’t reach, “I want to be with you every single second we have.”

“You indulge my gluttony, Marcus, that’s not a good thing.”

“It’s not gluttony when it’s once a month,” Marcus grits out bitterly through his teeth. “And anyway, this is the twenty first century. No one gives a shit about gluttony anymore.”

Esca chuckles, lips leaving feathery-light kisses on the back of Marcus’s neck, “How’s chapter twelve going?”

Marcus groans, “Still not working after that revision with chapter nine. His motives are all off, now.” He yawns and Esca squeezes him.

“You’re tired. Go back to sleep. I want you alert for our day.”

“No,” Marcus pouts, turning to face Esca and hold onto him in return, “It’ll be a waste of our time if I’m unconscious.”

Esca’s mouth crooks up in one corner and he lightly runs fingertips through Marcus’s eyebrows against the growth and then smoothing them, “I dream of what it’ll be to hold you in my arms as you sleep, Marcus... to see you wake up… Indulge me?”

“But I’ll miss you,” Marcus whispers even as his eyes fall closed. He has managed on numerous occasions to stay awake for the day they have, but it has been a hard week and the trek through the snow did not help him keep his strength.

As always, he relishes the feel of Esca against him. The realness of it. He holds onto that realness, to the person that he loves so very much that he cannot stand it. He murmurs, “Winter days are so short.”

“That they are,” Esca murmurs. “But I will be right here, my love, giving you sweet dreams,” and he starts to hum, a strange ancient tune. Marcus closes his eyes, and begins to drift to sleep.

}{

_The clovers, not yet warmed by the sun, felt cool against Marcus’s bare skin as he stretched out in the sunlight, doing a good job at the unashamed nudity thing. But then, they were miles from anyone. Esca was lying beside him, doing the same, but then, he would do it in Time’s Square or London if the amount of iron in cities like those wouldn’t kill him first._

_Birds sang and the sun was getting stronger as the morning waxed into day. Marcus finally found a three-leaf clover after several long minutes of searching his green bed for one. It was supposed to be four leaf ones that brought luck, but there was always an abundance of those wherever Esca happened to be so Marcus had taken to thinking of three leafs as lucky. Esca said it was his magic, that it was similar in some ways to the magic of leprechauns._

_He said this very seriously._

_With the triumphant normalcy of a three leaf clover in his fingers, Marcus rolled it so it spun like the blades of a fan and broke their silence to say, “So I was reading up on fairy lore the other day.”_

_“Oh, please. So much of that is pure imagination.”_

_“Well obviously but the fairy ring part of it is true,” Marcus said, looking over at the ring of knobby mushrooms in the grass which Esca had walked out of earlier, right after midnight, just moments before they were in each other’s arms in the moonlight and king was on all fours with Marcus breeching him and thrusting into him as he used his tongue to trace the welt-like lines in Esca’s sensitive, glowing wings._

_“They say if you step inside one you’ll enter the fae kingdom,” Marcus continued, “and that’s true because I’ve seen you do it.”_

_“Yes, fine,” Esca relented, “_ That _part is right.”_

_“So can I visit?” Marcus asked, getting to his feet with the help of the mossy waiting rock to head for the mushrooms._

_“No!” Esca grabbed his arm and held him firm, so much stronger than he looked._

_“Why not?”_

_“Fae are dangerous by nature, Marcus. We’re greedy, we’re tricky. We’re even cruel. It has taken me a very long time to overcome these faults in myself. Others in my court are not so keen to correct themselves. They’ll see you_ \--beautiful you-- _and every single one of them will try to make you theirs--all they have to do is get to you eat or drink something as small as a sunflower seed or a drop of nectar. If you do, you’re their slave for eternity.”_

_“Okay then,” Marcus snorts, “so I’ll politely refuse their offers to dine.”_

_Esca’s chin set hard and his eyes flashed, “Marcus, this isn’t a joke. You’ll be enchanted by the magic, not thinking straight. Even the air in the fae court is made from lust and seduction. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”_

_Kneeling in the clovers in front of the fairy, Marcus took his hands, “Who cares so long as I get to stay with you?”_

_“Didn’t you hear me, Marcus? I said greedy, tricky, and_ cruel _. Being the slave of a fairy won’t be kinky, it’ll be_ hell _.”_

 _“What if I’m_ your _slave?”_

_“No.”_

_Marcus’s shoulders dropped and he was begging, “Oh, come on, why not? We could be together every single day. We could have sex that lasts weeks at a time. We could fly together. Don’t you want to spend the rest of forever with me at your side, there to do nothing but love you unconditionally?”_

_“Impossible.”_

_Marcus’s eyebrows came together, anger rolling into his features, “Are you saying love is not everlasting?”_

_“Love is eternal, Marcus. It is magic far deeper than even the fae can understand, but_ living in love _does not last for eternity. Trust me on this. In fact, trying to keep it forever is the surest way to destroy it. Loving is meant to have a deadline. It becomes corrupt with greed and arrogance otherwise.”_

 _Marcus felt it wasn’t wise to argue this point because he was all of thirty when Esca was tens of thousands of years old and so he would need to have a stronger argument built than the childish retort that nearly sprang from his lips:_ well, MY LOVE will NEVER be corrupt with greed and arrogance!

_e crawled back over Esca, kissing him until he was prone on the ground again and he traced the wing lying in the grass under Esca’s shoulder just to feel the king shiver. “What if I swallow?” he asked, moving down to put his lips over the head of Esca’s cock, “does that count? Will I be your immortal slave, then?”_

_Esca swore in ancient dialect and shook his head pushing Marcus back down to continue what he started._

}{

Marcus opens his eyes and finds himself in Esca’s arms. They are in the floor, morning light bright in the window. He can hear Esca’s hummingbird heart under his ear and feel Esca’s breaths in his hair and his chest moves up and down under the weight of Marcus’s head. Any aches from spending the night in the floor are overpowered as his heart sings, and he smiles up at his supernatural boyfriend, “Worth it,” he murmurs.

Esca smiles at him, as awake and patient as ever. He trails a soft finger down Marcus’s jaw, “I told you it would be. I, for one, found the time well spent. You are extraordinarily interesting when you sleep. So peaceful, unguarded...” he continues to trace Marcus’s whole face like he’s drawing it. He smirks, “You’re eyes move around under the lids. And you speak.”

“Speak?” Marcus asks, alarmed. Esca grins impishly.

“You kept telling me how much you love me.”

Grinning back, Marcus puckers his lips and kisses Esca’s chest, “What else is new?”

“You also murmured something about lucky charms and unicorns.”

Marcus laughs, “Liar.” He shifts and sits up, groaning as those aches make themselves known now. He remembers that he is nearer to forty than he had been when he met Esca and he sighs at the notion of aging while Esca stays youthful. Lovers should grow old together… or not at all.

He thinks of their long, serious conversations about themselves, each other, the world, in which Marcus always feels connected to someone, not alone, not messed up, not crazy.

He thinks of the laughter they share ranging from snorts and snickers to rib-cracking howls. Their arguments, the hot flashes of rage and rash words spoken blindly that cut deeper than intended. The sex, hot, hard and often kinky. Esca’s sharp focus and little smile as he reads the print outs of Marcus’s latest pages. His weirdly sweet smelling farts, his eyes, his taste, his sounds, his toes.

To Marcus, Esca means a lot of things—mystery, stubbornness, power, generosity, gracefulness possessiveness, strength--but what he means the most is _tenderness_. A tenderness Marcus had never known before and can’t live without now that he’s known it.

It has been eight years since Esca knocked on his door, scared his cat and bewitched him. Eight years, but that’s ninety six months, only ninety six days together, not even a collective year. It’s not enough. In ten, fifteen, twenty more years, it’ll only amount to--at the most--just a year’s worth of time.

Marcus’s eyes sting. It’s not enough.

It will never be enough.

}{

_He found Esca in the kitchen, seemingly conversing with the cat which scampered off when Marcus put his arms around the fairy. He felt Esca’s wings shudder against his chest where they were pressed between them. It continued to amaze the human how sensitive there were, the merest touch brought the acutest pleasure._

_He traced the backs of his fingers down the outsides of Esca’s arms, “It’s getting late.”_

_“I know.” He turned and put his arms around Marcus, “I feel how much you need me to stay.”_

_“Then stay.”_

_Instead of answering with what they both knew was true--he couldn’t stay, he just couldn’t--Esca kissed him reverently. Marcus loathed the very idea of letting him go and dropped his face into the crook of his neck._

_“Say you’ll keep me forever,” Marcus whispered into his skin. “Say it. Just say it, please.”_

_Esca breathed out, slowly and whispered back, “I will keep you, dearest Roman. I will keep you for the rest of your life.”_

_Clenching his eyes closed, Marcus murmured through his teeth, “That’s not good enough.”_

_Esca sighed again, that time not contentedly but wearily, “It_ must _be enough, Marcus. Try to let it be. You aren’t even trying.”_

 _“I_ am _trying, but it hurts to think that you will live on without me! That when I’m cold in the ground, you’ll find another to be with and you’ll whisper all the same things as if I never happened! I--” Marcus’s voice broke._

_“How dare you?” the fairy king asked, dark with anger, tense as he moved well away from Marcus. His wings flashed icy blue-green and his mouth was a hard line. “A mere mortal such as you could never understand my heart, Marcus. Don’t even try it.”_

_“Then what are we doing?” Marcus shouted, losing his temper, throwing out his arms, “What is the point in telling pretty lies about how much we love each other when we don’t!”_

_Whirling, eyes flashing, Esca asked, “We don’t?”_

_Marcus laughed bitterly, “We can’t even_ understand _each other! You call that love?”_

 _“I want you to be happy; I want you to be_ free _!” Esca shouted, “I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I ache for you when you aren’t near. I think of you before I think of myself, before I think of what’s best for my_ people _!_ _And I will give you up if it’s what’s best for_ you _. That is what I call love, Marcus. I love you and if you dare to belittle that again, I shall…” his voice trailed off and he shook his head, furious, mumbled, “I shall become the worst of myself again.” He closed his eyes in great pain._

_“Esca?”_

_“I’m old, Marcus. I wasn’t always the fairy you know me to be. I was cruel in my younger years…If someone had wounded me then as you have done just now, I would have punished them severely…”_

_“I don’t care,” Marcus said stubbornly, “You’re different now. You’ve never hurt me. You never will.”_

_“Will it hurt you to know that I have loved other humans before you, Marcus?” Esca’s voice is dull with the ache of sadness, “Many others. And I made mistakes… hurt them by not telling the truth or by telling too much… and then, once, I made the worst mistake of my life. It’s been centuries and it’s not even over.”_

_It was a blow to hear that Esca loved others when Marcus had never loved anyone before Esca. He sat sullen for a moment and then asked, “What happened?”_

_“He began talking like you are now, asking me for immortality… Selfishly, I fed him a strawberry from my plate. Against my better judgment, I kept him for myself. I even let him be a prince of my people… I ruined him, but I will not ruin you._ I will not _.”_

_Marcus’s stomach turned, “What do you mean, ruined him?”_

_“Even the purest love festers when given enough time, Marcus. And believe me when I tell you that it is the purest love which can turn so irreparably into the purest hate. He is my enemy now and no creature in all of existence both magic and mortal, do I loathe more than Liathan the prince of Blue Court.”_

_Esca’s eyes were hard with certainty, dark with sadness. He shook his head, smoothed a thumb over Marcus’s cheekbone, “And there was a time when I was devoted to him, cherished him as much as I cherish you now…”_

_Marcus pulled away, stung, and Esca continued, “I have forgotten any tenderness I once felt for Liathan. That is what happens with every immortal love story. I knew that but tried to keep him anyway. And now our war has been raging for centuries, my people suffering because of what I did. Yet, still, I allow myself to keep visiting you every month. You--another clueless, beautiful human like he had been. Like all of them were. I let myself woo you, ensnare you just as I did the others … I will never learn. You are right, Marcus. You don’t love me. How could you?”_

_Before Marcus could respond, midnight arrived and in a hum of magic and twinkle of distant music, Esca lost his human form. A glint of light might have been from the silver clasp of the cat’s collar, or it might have been the fairy leaving through the window._

_Marcus was waiting for him at the fairy ring the very next waning crescent and the moment Esca stepped into the human realm, he was taken up in Marcus’s thick arms._

_“I love you,” Marcus told him as he squeezed him. “I do understand you now, I think, and I love you more for it. I’m sorry for what I said, I’m so sorry it wounded you. It’s not true, you know that right? I_ do _love you Esca. I love you so much. I can’t help it.”_

_Esca was squeezing him back and by now shaking with a purple glow in his wings, his voice thin and wobbly but happy sounding, “Marcus, you continue to prove you are too good for me.”_

_“Stop it. I’m perfect for you.”_

_“Yes,” Esca laughed pulling back to look up into his eyes, hold his face, “Yes. You are. My perfect human who I love so very, very much.”_

}{

It is snowing again outside, a flurry of thick flakes outside the window. Leaving Marcus to stretch and get the rest of the way out of his clothes (it has become the natural order of things for Marcus to remain as naked as Esca throughout the course of this day) Esca goes to the kitchen to make coffee. There are still some electrical appliances, but, though it subdues him a little, Esca promises that the little bits of iron metal in them don’t harm him when he is this size.

Marcus throws more wood on the fire and then takes the cup when Esca returns and hands it to him. He can’t help but wish it was a fae cup and fae drink as he takes a sip, that Esca was taking him, claiming him, trapping him with him at his side. For time. Just for more time. To be together.

He’s being clingy, he’s being dependent, but he can no longer subdue the thoughts like he used to be able to do. He needs to stay with Esca. Forever.

He puts down the cup and draws Esca in to straddle his lap. Tracing his wings and feeling his shiver, Marcus smiles up at him, lost in the precious feeling of him.

“I will always love you,” Marcus whispers. Esca smiles, combs his fingers through his hair.

“I know you will, my Marcus.”

A knot in his stomach makes him feel sick and he looks away, murmurs, “But you’ll forget me.”

Esca closes his eyes, grips the back of his neck, “Never.”

“You will.”

“Marcus, don’t,” Grey eyes look hard as the metal which makes the fairy so sick, “How many days have we lost arguing about this?”

Silent, Marcus only nods and lets Esca change the subject by rocking into him, “Do you know, as a king of the fae, I have never spent so much time alone in my private chambers, touching myself and thinking of you.”

Marcus laughs, moving against him in return, “A fairy masturbating; now I’ve heard it all!”

“A fairy _king_ masturbating, Marcus, don’t leave out the best part!”

Their laughter fills the room and draws the cat out for a look. Marcus kisses his enchanting lover, pressing his fingers into the tender junction where wing meets back. This has almost the same effect as the tender place deep inside him. But before Marcus can get there, his palm catches on something on his shoulder blade and Esca hisses, jerks away.

Startled, Marcus asks, “Was that--are you _hurt_?”

“It’s nothing,” Esca is moving away. He’s so light on his feet, so quick, he’s well away from Marcus before the clumsy human can get to his feet. But Marcus follows, catches him in the bathroom and turns him to have a look. There is a gash on his shoulder.

“What happened?” Marcus demands. Esca cranes around for a moment until he can catch the shoulder in his reflection in the mirror. He frowns at it in surprise like he hadn’t known it was there--it isn’t even bleeding, as if cut with something hot like a light saber--and he glances at Marcus, looks regretful. “I might have had some errands to run while you were asleep.”

Marcus gapes, several beats of silence pass as Esca dampens a cloth and tends to himself. Marcus closes his jaw and takes the cloth, asking, “What kinds of errands are more important than us?”

“Don’t be naïve, Marcus. You know I have responsibilities as king of a realm.”

“Yeah, okay,” Marcus concedes, “But what in the hell kind of responsibilities leave four inch gashes in your skin?”

Esca catches his eye in the mirror, smirking, “You call yourself a writer of ancient Rome historical fiction?”

“What does that mean?”

“Battle, my sweet!” Esca laughs, “What other kinds of kingly duties are there?”

“BATTLE?” Marcus gapes into the mirror, cloth and wound forgotten. He sputters for a moment and manages to get out, “Who--what--WHERE?”

“It was Liathan and we battled on the shores of the lake like proper fae kings.”

Marcus blinked. “You battled Liathan, your arch nemesis, without telling me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“You told me you would stay there beside me as I slept.” His voice is softer than he means it to be, weaker. Because the pain of this is more than he would have expected; Esca _lied_.

Esca shrugs, “A white lie to save time, dearest Roman, that’s all. You know you would have insisted on coming with me. It would have taken hours to make you stay.”

“Why couldn’t I come?”

“Because Liathan would kill you as soon as look at you, and he wouldn’t even break a sweat.”

Knocking away the shower curtain, Marcus sits on the edge of the tub and holds his head, “You guys do battle in this form?” he asks, “I thought you said these forms were the most dangerous--you could have DIED!”

“It’s nearly impossible to kill a fairy,” Esca replies, “but, yes, to kill one another is kind of the point. We have to do battle in this form now because fae-form becomes too apocalyptic for the locals. The humans would start flocking here in droves with all kinds of metal things trying to find the science behind our magic.”

Marcus does not miss the fairy’s reference to humans as if Marcus is excluded from the group. As if Marcus is of the fae. Esca does it more than he realizes and it always makes Marcus’s heart soar. But given the current topic, he’s a little too worried to get excited about subtle subtext of word choice. His mind keeps giving him scenarios about how Esca—his Esca, so powerful, so untouched by the world—can be wounded. Battle. He finds he cannot draw a full breath, “How often do you guy’s battle?”

Esca frowns, thinks about it, “I don’t know, there’s no real pattern to it.”

“Have you battled him more than this one time since you met me?”

Esca nods, “A few times. He’s always extra quick to declare a duel when I’m seeing a human.”

Marcus throws out a hand and knocks over the cup with his toothbrush in it, “Are you serious? Eight years and you’ve never told me when you go to WAR?”

“Stop being melodramatic.”

“Lots of people get pissed when they find out their boyfriend has been regularly seeing his ex behind their back!”

Esca’s wings actually droop and he scoffs, shrugs again, “It’s not like I’ve been fucking him.”

“You’ve been _battling_ him, next best thing!”

“Is that what this is?” Esca turns and pushes Marcus until he slides backwards into the tub. He climbs in on top of him, straddling him, “You think I still love him? Marcus, I’ve _told you_ what happened between us.”

Marcus is pouting but doesn’t have the will to stop. “You said you loved him like you love me. To me, that means you’ll always love him no matter how much you hate him.”

“I never said I loved him like I love you. I said I cherished him like I cherish you. And I did. I cherished his mortality, his fragility, his child-like wonder. But I didn’t love him like I love you. If I loved him even _half_ as much as I love you then I never would have made him immortal. That was what ruined everything, I’ve told you that a hundred times. Love changes when time stops, Marcus. It withers and it dies standing up! It’s nothing but black hatred now.”

“So our love won’t last forever,” Marcus whispers. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“It will,” Esca promises, “It will so long as you die as you are meant to die.”

“So to you forever just means for the rest of _my_ life. _Not_ yours.” His voice is bitter, cold with anger.

“Marcus, please, I swear to you I will always love you. But not--“

“Not if I stay with you!” It’s the same stupid thing Esca always says and it just doesn’t make sense. “You can only love me forever if I die?”

“Exactly. Oh, it sounds terrible, but it’s true. If I let you grow old, our love grows stronger and deeper and when you die,” he voice thins out, “It will break my heart…" he drops his forehead on Marcus's chest and Marcus can feel a puff of warm breath on his skin there as esca contiues, softer, "but I will carry your memory and cherish it forever."

Esca lifts his head, eyes wide with his pleas, face hard with his certainty, "OUr love won’t be like it has become with Liathan, where I tried to stretch that love over centuries and it snapped, evaporated like it never was. It never was, Marcus, that’s what it feels like. I can’t cherish my memories of him. Don't you see? That love _ended_!”

Marcus wants theirs to be forever, wants it so badly his eyes sting and his chest constricts. He kind of understands what Esca is saying but not really. It’s like when people say they’ll be together in the afterlife… except Marcus’s afterlife can’t have Esca in it because Esca can’t die.

It hurts. It just hurts. It’s so unfair.

The bathroom falls quiet, tears burn and drop in perfect silence and Esca snuggles his face into Marcus’s neck, tears dripping on him as he whispers, “Please, please, try to understand. With time I can bear to lose you, but I will never survive hating you. To hate you as much as I love you… it would destroy all that we’ve made together. Please... _Please_ , Marcus, don’t take our love away from me.”

The fairy shakes in Marcus’ arms and the idea that maybe Esca is as desperate for Marcus as Marcus is for him is welcome. Comforting, knowing he’s not the only one. He’s not alone. They have that.

At least they have that.

“Okay,” Marcus whispers back, wrapping his arms around him.

}{

_The room glowed with yellow and red sparks from Esca’s wings. The bed frame was thumping the wall, the sound of it only increasing Marcus’s pleasure. Beneath him, Esca was open and coming undone, gasping and moaning, wings trembling where they were trapped between him and the bed._

_“Mine,” Esca growled, clutching Marcus to him with all his limbs._

_“Yes, yes,” Marcus thrust into Esca harder, choking on the pleasure as salt stung his eyes, “I’m yours,” he panted, promised, delirious, “I’m yours.”_

_Esca gave a keening howl as he came and, following him, Marcus cried out and stilled, putting their foreheads together as they panted for breath. Esca continued to hold him in a death clutch and Marcus didn’t want him to let go anyway, so fought the post-ejaculate jelly feeling in his muscles so he could stay where he was, trembling, “Yours.” He whispered into Esca’s mouth._

_Slender hands held his face, “Marcus... I have never loved anyone or anything like I love you. Never this much. So much, Marcus…”_

_Marcus kissed him until, having never pulled out of Esca, he was hard and moving in him once again._

}{

“I dread tomorrow,” Marcus says after they’ve caught their breaths. To make up for not telling him about his duel with Liathan, Esca just bent Marcus over the bathroom sink and drove his hard slender cock into Marcus’s willing ass so hard he saw stars when he came all over the bathmat. Esca takes his hand, draws him back towards the bed as Marcus continues, “It’s terrible to sit here alone and think it will be four whole weeks or more before I will see you again.”

Esca makes a sympathetic noise, “I feel the same, Marcus. But what can we do?”

Marcus gives him a significant look. Esca playfully gives his cheek a light slap and then Marcus is pushing him down onto the bed and crawling over him. He knows he shouldn’t because it could ruin everything, but he also knows he has to because pretending that nothing is wrong will ruin everything, too.  “But I’m being real with you, baby…. I don’t know if I can live like this for much longer.”

Air rushes out of Esca and with urgency he clings to him, “Marcus, dearest, just hold onto what we have. It’s good, this. The time we have. Isn’t it? Isn’t it worth the wait?”

“Yes and--no,” Marcus answers truthfully sitting back on his haunches, straddling Esca, “Listen, I hear you when you say all of that stuff about the consequences of my immortality. I do. But don’t you think you’re taking one incident and making it the rule?”

“Marcus…” Esca wriggles from under him and moves away from him, and Marcus lets him go even though it hurts. “Will you never stop asking for immortality?”

“If it means being with you? No, I’ll never stop.” Marcus keeps his jaw set firm and his spine straight as he says it. Hold onto it. That’s all he can do. Will power, determination. He can make eternity into heaven. He _can_. They can. Together.

Esca just looks at him, melancholy, and turns, saying softly, “No, you’ll never stop.” He goes over to the window and looks out at the sunlit snow. Marcus doesn’t move, afraid of flying over to him and clinging to him like some pathetic weepy idiot. His heart is racing. Esca breaks the silence, “Our time is almost up.”

Marcus is not sure if he means their time for this day, or their time forever.

}{

_“Uncle, stop giving out my e-mail and phone number. I’m not interested in blind dates.”_

_“I just think it would be nice for you to have some company up there, Nephew. It’s not healthy living the life of a hermit.”_

_“I’m not alone. I have a neighbor. We spend lots of time together. In fact--” And here Marcus just gushed it out because goddammit he needed to tell_ someone _before he went crazy, “In fact we see as much of each other as we can. Uncle, I’m in love!” He laughed and only vaguely registered how maniacal it sounded, “I’m_ so _in love sometimes I think I can’t breathe!”_

_Uncle’s surprised chuckles were warm through the receiver, “Well, this is sudden. But, I'm glad to hear it. Very glad. Relieved even. Perhaps going up there wasn’t a mistake after all. Tell me about him.”_

_Marcus sighed, leaned on the counter, “He’s quirky.”_

_“…Quirky.”_

_“Yeah, that’s what I said, and I meant it as a warning because--well, because he’s kind of a lot to take in all at once. He’s free spirited, kind of like an anarchist but with a gentle, all-natural attitude. He’s up here to get away from all the unhealthy bullshit of the world.”_

_“Hmm,” Uncle sounded over-all pleased but unsure, “Never thought you would go for the type, really.”_

_“Me either, but that’s how it works, right? Opposites attract.”_

_“What else?”_

_“He’s bossy but he means well, and he’s got the most amazing stories to tell. He’s done_ so much _in his life! And the_ _sex_ \-- _Uncle, it’s unbelievable. There is nothing I haven’t tried._ ”

_“Okay, maybe dial back the personal parts a little.”_

_“No, Uncle, I need someone to talk to about this, actually. Is it normal to, like, you know, come seven times in one night?”_

_Uncle made a literal choking noise. “Seven?”_

_“It nearly killed me the first time, but yeah.”_

_“The first time.”_

_“We’re building my stamina.”_

_“Okay, that’s enough. Find someone who didn’t change your diapers to talk about this with.”_

_Marcus laughed, “Sorry. But that’s how amazing it is. How amazing_ he _is!”_

_Uncle laughs, “Wow, you’ve really fallen haven’t you?”_

_“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”_

_“So when can I meet him?”_

_“Oh.” Marcus’ good mood halted with the logistics and he quickly explained the first off-putting thing he could think of, “That could be weird. He’s--well, he’s a nudist.”_

_Long silence._

_Marcus laughed, embarrassed, “I know, I know. But it’s really not as bad as social stigma paints it to be.”_

_“Good lord, Nephew, you aren’t nude right now are you?”_

_Marcus laughed fully, “_ No _, Uncle. I’m dating him. Not turning into him.”_

_“Well, to each his own, I guess.”_

_“Thank you for understanding.”_

_“I didn’t say I understand. I just accepted it for your sake.”_

_“Well thanks for that, then.”_

_“Can I at least speak to him? Is he there now?”_

_Marcus was all too aware that outside the night sky held the new moon, as black as the loneliness which would envelope Marcus when it was time to sleep, sit heavy on his chest, painful, smothering him until salty spots dripped into his pillow... “No, he’s away on business.”_

_“Marcus, what kind of business trips do nudists go on?”_

_“You’d be surprised.” His voice falls flat because reality is crashing down around him. Family Christmases, birthdays, none of that would happen with Esca. Like gay couples in the fifties, they were going to have to hide their love from the world. Pretend it wasn’t there._

_Uncle said something but Marcus missed it entirely and didn’t care to ask for a repeat._

_“Ah,” Marcus refrained from sniffing and giving away his suddenly wet eyes. He fought to keep his voice casual as he said, “Listen, Uncle, I’ve got to go. Deadline to meet.”_

_“Okay, I’ll talk to you next time. And Marcus?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“I’m truly happy for you. Love is precious while we have it.”_

_Marcus made a sound of agreement and managed a “bye” before hanging up._

_He wiped at his eyes, sniffing and murmuring curses at the pain welling up inside. And on top of it all, it would be a whole month before he could hold Esca again…_

}{

Marcus likes to hear stories about how the world used to be. Esca’s perception is slightly blurred, of course, being on the magic end of things, but he still got around a lot in the days of old before iron started being so abundantly used in construction. These days, he and his people are pretty much confined to the highlands, but he says it’s not as suffocating as it might seem.

“There’s nothing like this land,” he whispers to Marcus as they lie in his bed, “It’s alive with magic and memory--spirits and gods of all kinds.”

“What do you mean _gods_?”

“I mean gods. So many of them are forgotten now, growing weaker... one day they’ll be naught but ghosts. ”

“Awesome,” Marcus breathes.

“You can hear their voices on the wind, if you listen.”

“What kinds of things do they say?”

Thinking on it, Esca murmurs something which rolls and twists around in the weird sounds of ancient, forgotten dialects of Gaelic.

“What’s that mean?”

 _“_ Please don’t forget me.”

“Oh,” Marcus grunts, feeling sad for the poor forgotten gods. He knows the sentiment exquisitely well. Esca will live years, centuries, long after Marcus is dust. Swallowing and pushing away those kinds of thoughts, he grins and holds onto the moment they have now. The moment when it’s all okay because they’re together. He squeezes Esca, whispers, “I think you should teach me Gaelic so I can listen for the gods.”

Esca rolls up onto his elbows, grinning, wings glowing white, and he jumps right into a lesson, making vowel sounds which Marcus repeats. Their soft voices (one speaking slowly, the other even slower and more stilted) and their light laughter and their kisses are the only sounds in the room, in the cabin, in the highlands, in the world, for hours.

}{

_Once, Marcus had the flu on their day, too sick to even realize it was their day before Esca let himself in to find Marcus bundled in his quilt, red running nose, puffy eyes, pallid skin, thermometer under his tongue._

_“You look terrible!” Esca cried, running around cleaning up tissues and putting away bowls of old soup. He climbed onto the bed and felt Marcus’s forehead before taking the thermometer and checking it. He frowned, “What temperature are you humans supposed to be, anyway?”_

_“Nindy eighd poind six.”_

_Esca whistled, “You’re on the hot side.” He put the thermometer on the table and, pouting playfully, leaned in to give him a kiss. Marcus pulled away,_

_“Doh. I don’d wand you doo cadch id.”_

_“I’m fae, I don’t get the flu.”_

_“Ohd.” Marcus had a coughing fit and then fell into moans of misery. Esca got a cold water soaked cloth and started dabbing at his feverish skin. Marcus pouted in his agony and snuggled into Esca, eventually asking for soup in his stuffy sounding voice._

_Esca wouldn’t help him eat the soup. He feed it to him like in the movies, but after putting two or three spoonfuls to MArcus' lips, he'd said it was too boring. He cleaned and sprayed everything with Lysol and when Marcus finally dropped the spoon into the empty dish, Esca purred at him, leaned in to peck him on the cheek for a reward after finishing the whole bowl._

_Marcus was dropping off to sleep when he said, “Dank you for daking care of me.”_

_“Oh, my love, I could spend the rest of my life taking care of you.”_

}{

The hours have flown by too quickly, as always.

Marcus pulls on twice as many layers as before in preparation for the trip back out to the ring. Esca tries to insist that Marcus not go out into the cold again. Marcus insists that he, Esca, stay here until the magic pulls him back, but Esca hates doing that. Says it hurts to be made so small around so much metal--the electric wires, the car outside, the stove, the fridge. Plus, the whole ordeal is easier if he steps back into the ring full sized. So they eventually have to give up thier arguments and settle on the middle ground: Marcus will walk him back there and that’s the end of it. Dressed, the human shuts the cabin door, severing them from the only source of warmth for miles.

The sky is falling softly with a quiet roar of the deepest silence. Clouds obscure their moon, and the weather forecasts say it will be a big snow fall. Esca fusses like a mother, making sure Marcus’ scarves and hood are closed tight. He kisses his nose and Marcus leans back to catch a large snowflake on his tongue.

They do not speak on the journey. They bump shoulders, and Esca sings a few bars of Marcus’ favorite Gaelic song, but the attempt at lighthearted love is buried in the frigid night of stillness. Marcus crunches on through the snow, puffing white and sniffing not from the cold.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” Esca asks.

Marcus shrugs.

“My love, don’t be idle. Work is the cure.”

“I can’t write anymore. I don’t give a fuck about it like I used to. I…I don’t know. It’s like I’ve out grown it. Something for single, ignorant Marcus to do, dream and world-build and play god to my own creations. Now, with you and us and the way things are, how they could be, how they’re looking to turn out….I know too much. Everything else is just bullshit.”

“It’s probably just writer’s block.”

“Well, I’ve had it for maybe three years now, so…”

“Okay. Then a different kind of work. Clean the house. Build something with your hands. Go visit your uncle.”

Marcus throws his head back and laughs. “Yeah right. I don’t have a word to say to him on the phone, the hell am I going to say to his face? It goes back to knowing too much, Esca. I have too much to talk about, and not enough at the same time….”

“It frightens me, to think of you sitting in that cabin in such pain as you described to me. In _my_ pain, only you haven’t pressing matters of the realm pulling you from the darkness as I have… Find an occupation, would you?”

Marcus grunts a noncommittal noise, and in the trees up ahead he can see the waiting rock. Lightening flickers. Esca’s head snaps up and his eyes narrow. “Liathan. _Fuck_.”

A shadow movement snatches at the corner of Marcus’ eye, too fast for the human to comprehend, and then Esca claws at the air. It rips under his fingernails like a thin veil, simmering at the edges like cigarette paper, and from the tear steps a creature of darkness.

Dead-white skin painted with mud and blue ink, pants that look to be made from cobwebs, wings un-glowing, buzzing to a frequency more high pitched than Esca’s, something like a drill bit. The eyes are white, no iris. When he smiles evilly, the teeth are equally white and give the impression of a third, larger eye.

Marcus shudders and falls back several steps from the being that appeared before him from behind thin air. _Was he there the whole time?_

Liathan speaks and Marcus doesn’t understand the rapid hate filled words. Esca snarls a short answer. What happens next is not for humans to understand. The best Marcus will ever do, is that something to the right (where Liathan stands as part of the inky night) _erupts_.

Then something from Esca _explodes_ , and then Marcus is airborne long enough to feel weightless as he falls, but then the ground tells him how heavy he is. As he comes down on both legs, something below snaps in two. The pain is whitewash, static, a thousand bolts of electricity sizzling through his body, and he empties the contents of his stomach into his icy crater of snow.

“ESCA!” he shout-coughs, vomit spittle still slinging to his chin. Lightening is flashing, the wind is howling, and he can hear the sound of timeless hatred in the alien words Liathan growls, poisoning the world.

Marcus blinks away the tears of pain but even breathing the cold air, the shiver in his muscles, hurts his leg, and his vision blurs. He can see only blackness and streaks of light. Esca’s light. It moves about, here and then there. But there is no telling where the enemy is lurking.

There’s a breath on his neck. “Just wait, boy,” says that evil voice in English. Marcus jumps and cries out in pain and fear. “He marks all of them with the same scar.” There is a dark chuckle, and then the night twists behind him like a blanket. Liathan is gone.

_Gone or just hiding?_

Esca’s light careens into Marcus “My Marcus! Oh! No! No! I’m so sorry! So so sorry!”

He reaches past Marcus, claws at the air. Nothing to rip there. So Liathan is gone. Good. Holy shit.

Esca drags both his thumbs over Marcus’ eyes, drying them. “What did he do? What did he say to you? Did he touch you?”

“N-n-no,” Marcus grits out. His teeth are clattering. The snow has melted into his clothes, and his leg is veering to the outside at an unnatural angle. He is shivering and shaking, and he can feel the world moving, dancing with his stomach. “My leg. I—I—Broken. It’s totally broken.”

“Shit,” Esca breathes, looking at it with wide eyes.

“Heal me,” Marcus rasps. Esca drags his eyes off the grotesque limb, and he almost smirks. “I don’t know how.”

“What?” the word is a dry gasp of pain, because Marcus accidently shifts and pain crackles through him like fire on dry wood. Esca caresses his face to comfort him, to distract him. “I can’t heal with magic. That’s a whole other….fae healers are rare. My mother…but she’s part of winter now…”

“You’re rambling,” Marcus’ voice is strained. A sweat has broken out on his skin. “Baby, I don’t know what that means, just... Can’t—can’t you do something? Sing me a song. Make the pain stop.”

“Right!” His wings chirp and buzz, the lights shifts three colors, and then he is humming, whispering, singing one of the most haunting songs Marcus has ever heard in his life. It does not last long, just a line or two, but it works. Like all of Esca’s music, it serves to relax him into a puddle of jelly. Like an eraser, the strange words have rubbed off the worst of the pain, so that Marcus can see straight now. He still cannot move an inch.

The wind howls in the distance, the snow falls faster, the silence is a wet hiss now. Marcus is tense, frozen, quaking with cold and jerking from the stabs of pain from his leg. He looks up at his lover’s gashed lip, blackened eye, folded wing tip. “What do we do?”

It is the first time Marcus has seen Esca at a complete loss.

They are closer to the ring than to the house so getting Marcus home is impossible, because Esca will turn thumb-sized before they are anywhere near the house and Marcus will be stranded in the cold. But if they continue on to the circle and Marcus joins Esca in the center of it…

“You can take me into the fairy ring.”

“No.”

“Just over night,” Marcus says, “You can get a healer for me and then give me a tour of your realm; we can spend the night in _your_ bed for a change. Wouldn’t that be fun? I won’t eat anything, I promise.”

“No, you _would_ eat something. Even if you didn’t do it on purpose--which by now I’m sure you would-- the temptation would be too overwhelming to resist.”

“Then what do you propose we do?" Marcus snaps, "I can’t walk without your help and you can’t get me back to the house in time. Just take me with you. Come on, just do it. It’s the only way for us to be together!”

“Marcus--“

“No, hear me out. You said so yourself, you love me more than you’ve ever loved anyone. And me, well, we both know that I don’t write anymore or do anything but live for the days that I get to be with you. I’m _yours_ , Esca. Utterly yours. That’s got to mean something!”

“My love, please, stop--“

“You didn’t know what to expect before with Liathan so you let it fall apart, but now you know better. We can be careful, make it work. Spend a few decades apart every century or so.” He laughs in desperation, bobs a shoulder but Esca just looks pained.

A long silence stretches out and Esca shakes his head, “You don’t understand time like I do. The power of time. You can’t comprehend centuries, _actual centuries_ , passing before you’ve looked up. Time changes everything, even hearts. Even ours. Even if we could make our love last longer than Liathan’s… eventually, in time--given _enough_ time--it will break and when it does it will be even worse than with Liathan. So much worse.”

“But I’ll love you forever, I _know_ I will!” Marcus vows, feeling it tingle in his bones, a sting in his eyes. Pain and fear and love all rolled into one.

Esca holds him tight, shaking his head, “The eternal love you’re thinking of sharing with me exists only in heaven, which even fae aren’t sure about.”

Marcus starts to cry, unable to help himself, “I’ll freeze to death if you leave me here.”

“I…” Esca starts, but does not finish. He runs a hand through his hair, “I can’t take you to my court. I won’t.”

“But—“ Marcus coughs the word because he feels like he has been hit in the stomach. Suddenly the vast waste of winter around them feels like it is closing in, “But I’ll die.” He feels like he is in a nightmare. “You’ll let me die?”

“Yes,” Esca chokes, “ _yes_ , if it means that I will never hate you even for one moment, yes I will let you go.” He kisses Marcus’s face all over, sniffs, “It will hurt me more than it will hurt you, but I will not destroy our love to save you. Oh, Marcus, I’m so sorry, but I can’t do that. I _can’t_ , please don’t ask it of me!”

“But I don’t want to die,” Marcus cries, huffs, still not believing, comprehending, what they are discussing, “I want to stay with you. I _belong_ to you!”

Esca bends over him, holding him tight and murmuring what distinctly sounds like curses in fae and then he breaks back into English with a puff of white breath into the night, a sob, “I don’t want to lose you, not now or ever, but I _don’t_ want to turn you into me, either. You’re too beautiful. Too perfect for that.”

The vast, encroaching cold crawls into Marcus’s bones and doom stills his blood as the reality starts to settle in. He chokes, “So…. So there’s nothing to do… there’s….. I’m _dying_.”

“You were always dying, my love.” Esca kisses him, a long passionate kiss which breaks with a gasp from the fairy king as his head snaps up and he looks towards the circle. “It’s happening.”

Marcus clings to him desperately, “Don’t go! I don’t want to be alone! Stay! I…I’m scared.”

Esca kneels and puts their foreheads together. “I was never going to let you die alone.”

A sword of ice and stone appears in Esca’s hand. The sight of it, for Marcus, is both horrifying and a relief. The hunter inside Marcus recognizes the act of kindness, the mercy. Without it, it will take hours of pain in his leg for the cold to get him.

They’ll find him, frozen, broken, stabbed to death, tell uncle he must have tripped, impaled on an icicle. The old man will spend the rest of his life wondering what the hell Marcus was doing out here in the middle of the night in this weather... he might try to find the man his nephew loved, only to be told that no such man ever existed...

The tears are freezing on Marcus' face. His eyes are locked on the sword. This is the only way. It is mercy. But he still does not want it. He still does not want to die. Suddenly life is more precious than it has ever been before. The vast unknown of death is crippling in a way a splintered shin bone will never be.

Courage deserting him, Marcus makes one last bid for immortality and mouths, _please_. Esca’s jaw tightens and he deliberately levels the sharp point at Marcus’ heart.

Out of the corner of Marcus’ eye, he sees the circle light up, hears the chimes calling the king home, but he’s looking at the fat tears rolling out of Esca’s eyes. The fairy shakes his head, says something lost to the wind.

“What?” Marcus asks.

“I can’t do this,” Esca repeats softly. “I don’t want just the memory of you. I want _you_.”

Strangely, through all the fear and pain, Marcus has never been so happy to hear this and he laughs. Now he thinks he can die, just knowing neither of them want this.

“I love you,” Marcus whispers. He wants it to be the last thing he says. He closes his eyes and pretends that heaven will be every single happy moment they shared, scattered moments stitched seamlessly together in a never ending loop. At least that way, dying will not be so bad. Maybe that is what Esca always meant by saying that only through death can love last forever.

The blade sings through the air and—misses Marcus’s chest. Esca swings it in a wide arch around behind his back. Esca _screams_ and disappears, leaving Marcus in darkness.

Marcus is alone. Midnight has come and gone and Esca with it.

All around Marcus, the night erupts.

The world screams in the same agony as the star-crossed lovers as they part forever and the ground shakes as the sky gives up and drops all its snow at once. Marcus shivers, feeling colder now that the perpetual heat of the fairy is gone from his side. It sounds like he is in hell, souls wailing for an end to misery. The force of the wind literally knocks him over, the snow burries him in seconds.

Then—all at once—the storm ceases. Everything stops.

There is a silence and stillness so prevailing it envelopes everything, and Marcus does not even doubt that this is death. Until, that is, he realizes he is still breathing. That he can still feel his heart beating, the snow in his clothes, the pain in his leg, the cold on his face.

Scared, he looks around at the snowy night around him, and realizes he can see stars up above. As if steam wiped from a bathroom mirror, the clouds of the storm have been swept away to reveal the clarity of the scrubbed and polished sky.

The new moon is a black spot of loneliness tucked among the glittering stars.

Marcus realizes he can see his breath stuttering out of him. It plumes out and fades without blowing away because there is not an ounce of wind in this quiet. Deadness. That is what it is. There is deadness in the atmosphere. The smothering stillness of the in-between. Marcus feels like the only soul left in a vast world of winter.

He can see the white snow glittering faintly in the starlight, utterly undisturbed. A wonderland. It is so beautiful Marcus aches in his chest worse than in his leg. Feeling, though, means he’s still alive. Not yet dead, just on the very edge of life. Beyond the point of no return.

“Esca,” Marcus whispers through chattering teeth, the word a puff of white into the night. It’s so silent it feels as if the whisper will be heard in the far shapes of the mountains. He looks around for a glint of light. Anything that tells him he is not alone. His heart is racing and fear closes in tighter and tighter.

“Esca, if you’re still here in fae form, don’t leave me,” he begs in a whisper, “Stay with me to the end. Esca. Esca, where are you?”

“Here,” comes Esca’s voice and then a large figure rises up from the snow in front of him and there are hands on him, pulling him to stand up on his feet. The movement jars his leg and his head swims, but there is someone there, someone holding onto him, keeping him upright. Esca. Solid, still human-sized, wrapping around him urgently even as Marcus slumps most of his weight on him.

Marcus realizes Esca is as naked as ever but… shivering.

“It’s c-c-cold, Marcus,” Esca’s voice has a smile in it, “I didn’t consider that. Ha, if this is what cold feels like, I don’t care for it. _Brrrr_!”

“Esca?” Marcus is stripping his jacket and one of his sweaters already. Some part of him that has caught up is moving his hands for him and putting the layers on his violently shaking boyfriend. It’s difficult to do and balance on one leg and he nearly falls, but Esca catches him, bowing severely under him like a sapling attempting to hold up a dizzy gorilla.

“Hurry or we’ll b-b-both freeze t-t-to death.”

“Esca you’re…” Marcus wishes he could see clearer but all his straining eyes can make out in the starlight is the undefined shape of someone beside him, someone still human sized and not glowing or buzzing, but shaking with cold as if winter has its claws in him. “You’re…”

“About to lose all my toes, love. Hurry.”

“You feel the cold now,” Marcus says blankly. He knows what this means but he can’t process it.

“Y-y-yes.”

After fumbling to jerk his mittens onto Esca’s hands, Marcus scrubs his bare palms up and down Esca’s arms, protected now in his coat and sweater, though his legs and feet are still bare, “Esca are you…?”

“I couldn’t make you like me, so I made myself like you,” Esca says through clattering teeth, “To save you. Oh--” The next words out of him are a string of harsh Gaelic that is undoubtedly a curse shouted at the sky, “IT’S FUCKING FREEZING OUT HERE! Home. Now. Lean on me. It’s going to hurt but you have to. You can do it. Walk, my love. Come on.”

Marcus takes a step forward on his good leg, leaning heavily on Esca who slips and slides a little in the snow but manages not to fall down. Dragging the bad leg forward hurts and Marcus grits his teeth, breathing deep and harsh, “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

Esca laughs distractedly, teeth chattering audibly, “Another step, come on.”

Repeating the process, they make it three steps more, and when Escs trips they both crash to the ground. Marcus swears profusely, screaming in pain as his leg is jarred horribly. Esca is back on his feet instantly and dragging Marcus up, “Keep going.”

“Fuck you, it hurts!”

“I know, I know, but I already can’t feel my feet, Marcus, we have to _go_!”

Setting his jaw, he makes it the rest of the way up the hill where Esca ends up just putting him on his rear and sliding him down, guiding him around rocks by shoving him this way and that. Marcus' leg dragging over the uneven ground is torture. At the bottom, Marcus is in so much pain he cannot see straight and he feels like he is going to be sick. Esca pulls him to his feet and he is sick, right there without any warning. Thankfully, he does not get any on Esca.

“We’re almost there.”

“No we’re not. You’re just saying that.”

“Okay, rest for a minute. Then we have to go.”

Marcus shakes his head, “No. I can’t. It hurts.”

“Marcus—“

“I know. You’re getting frost bite. That’s why you have to go on without me.”

Esca snorts, “Don’t be stupid, I made myself human for you. You expect me to leave you to die?”

“No,” Marcus actually laughs through his pain, more love for Esca growing out of the sensation, “Get more clothes and come back for me, genius.”

Esca doesn’t sound amused, “Liathan is still alive, Marcus! If I leave you, he could do _anything!”_

Oh. Marcs frowns, feeling the frozen small hairs on his neck rise, “What’s stopping him from doing anything now?’

“Shock, probably. The magic snapped when I cut off my wings. It would have whiplashed absolutely everything back into the Fae court. No doubt he’s fast on his way back out, though.”

“But it’s not the waning crescent. He’d have to wait a whole month, wouldn’t he?”

Esca’s voice is low, dark, “Not if he became king to my people.”

“But even the king can only come once a month,” Marcus counters.

“Yes, but having been made king on the new moon, it will be the new moon that is his human day. And the new king is due to come and negotiate with the landowner.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Marcus attempts to stand, cannot, wipes away the tears on his face and then looks up at Esca, “You said _if_ he’s the new king.”

“The title falls to a number of heirs. They will fight for it.”

“Heirs.”

Esca laughs, “I have been alive for thousands of years, Marcus. You have to expect that I’ve procreated in that time.”

Marcus almost forgets his pain. Almost. “You have _kids_?”

“Yes.”

Marcus huffs, offended, “How many?”

“Of the Fae kind? About a dozen sons. Twice more daughters than that. Of the human kind?” Esca shrugs, “When you get into human offspring I never know if I should count grandchildren and whatnot so I’ve lost count.”

Now Marcus really has forgotten the pain in his leg, “What the FUCK?”

Esca laughs, “The human perspective continues to astound me. Even when I’m one of you. Speaking of which, breathe on my toes, will you? I’m attached to them and don’t want them to fall off.”

“No, just—ah!” Marcus accidently jars his leg as he jerks his boot off. He pulls the other off easily and shoves them at him, “Take my shoes to get home. There’s a black pair in a box under my bed; they’ll fit you better. Bring these back for me. And blankets. Get the beanie off the bust of Caesar. I have some hand warmers in the drawer by the door. Oh, and find something to splint my leg with—the broom handle or even the plunger. Get socks to use for ties --”

“Marcus, I told you I’m not leaving you!”

“No, listen to me. You’re human now; you can get the gun from my closet, use it against him. Metal bullets will stop the bastard.”

Esca does not argue further but sits down and shoves his feet into the boots and then he grabs Marcus by the back of the head. “I will return as fast as humanly possible.”

“Human,” Marcus repeats, smiling, heart welling over as it finally starts to connect in his head.

Esca presses icy lips to his but the kiss is short because he is breaking away and Marcus can make out his thin, awkwardly clothed figure sprinting away through the snow. The boots are too big yet he still makes impressive speed.

Marcus piles snow onto his leg to kill the pain and his head spins. He is smiling, though, because Esca is still with him. Esca is… he’s… _human_! It is only because of his leg that Marcus is not jumping around, dancing, generally being a fool from happiness. His pain and Esca grapple to be the forefront of his thoughts, but the pain wins every time.

Marcus drifts in and out of consciousness.

“Well, well, well,” says a voice out of the darkness. Marcus startles like a deer, wrenching his leg. He yelps and clutches it. Nearby, the prince of the blue court is clapping. Only, when Marcus twists around, he sees that Liathan is no longer a prince. His wings glow with the king's light, right now a misty blue.

To the ignorant human’s surprise, Liathan’s eyes are no longer solid white like a zombie, and look normal. Brown. He is almost good looking, kinda handsome in that obvious way. Not like Esca.

“You did it,” the new fairy king says happily. “My hat’s off to you, boy—what is your name again? What have I heard him call you? Roman? William?”

“Marcus,” he growls, guard rising at the implication that he and Esca have been spied on. “And what did I do?”

“You killed him.”

“What?” Marcus asks, stomach bottoming out. He looks desperately into the distance Esca had slipped and slid into in clumsy shoes. Has he fallen and hurt himself too? But Liathan laughs and Marcus realizes a second too late that the fairy king is referring to Esca’s mortality. Admittedly the thought of Esca dying at all, even in old age, feels like a bad joke.

“Human,” Liathan scathes like he personally never belonged to the group. He laughs and shakes his head. “And a middle-aged one at that. What little time he’s given you both! HA!”

Marcus busies himself with his leg for a moment, and then glares up at the new fairy king, who has started circling Marcus like a statue in a museum. Uncomfortable under the scrutiny, so cold he cannot feel anything below the ankle or wrist, or any part of his head, and still praying that Esca will return any minute now with that gun, he stops his teeth from clattering to ask the benign-looking fairy, “Why do you look so different?”

“Do I? Do you mean the light?” he did not say _light,_ but the ancient word for the royal signifier, which was the first Gaelic word Marcus learned.

“No. Your face. You don’t even have tattoos anymore.”

“Oh, right,” Liathan snorts, “I suppose to you, Esca didn’t have tattoos either... The magic works according to perception, you see. It makes sense that you were seeing him as the good fairy, me the evil one. Oh, that is a funny notion.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh, the questions! I’ve forgotten the vivacious curiosity of the young. Hasn’t he explained how the magic alters perception depending on points of view?”

Marcus would rather chew off his tongue than admit that Esca doesn’t tell him things, but Liathan already knows that, and laughs, “He’s been good this time about not tempting you. He used to like it when they begged to know every little thing about being a fairy, and he’d tell them, and then he’d deny them any part of it, leave them to die unhappy and alone, rather than turn them into me.”

“He did that because he loved all of us more than he ever loved you.”

Liathan grunts like it’s a factoid of mild interest, but mostly a disgusting and disappointing notion. “And he loves you the most, is that right?”

“Maybe not the most,” Marcus says only for the sake of humility, a grace lost with a new revelation that sets his jaw forward victoriously. “But I will be the last.” His heart is racing and he cannot wait to see Esca again, to have and to hold him for the rest of their lives together. Equal.

“So you’re not going to kill me?” he asks Liathan when an awkward lull passes between them.

“Why should I? I am merciful to the weak and dying. The two of you may live happily ever after in your putrid mortality, it matters not to me. I have all that I want, the throne, the realm, vengeance. I admit it has come about differently than I ever imagined, but it has come, and I will not argue. Here—Marvis, you’re turning blue, warm up a little.”

Before Marcus can correct him, or move away from his touch, Liathan places a hand on Marcus’ chest, and warmth spreads out through him. It is not a hot fire, but it is enough to bring pins and needles to his thawing extremities and stop his shivering. “There you go. He probably doesn’t want to live the rest of his life with something half eaten by frostbite. Would you like my shoes?”

“R-Really?”

“We can call it a peace offering,” Liathan says with a smile, plopping down in the snow as if it were nothing and pulling off a pair of moccasins. Before Marcus can resist (if any part of his numb mind wants to resist the good idea that is protection against frostbite) Liathan jams Marcus’ frozen feet into the new shoes.

“AAAH!!” Marcus shouts with pain when the fairy moves his broken leg. The pain is enough to rob Marcus of sight and turn his stomach again, but he has nothing to hurl this time, so it is a painful dry heave.

“Sorry! Sorry! I forgot humans don’t heal so quickly, so sorry there, Martin.”

Shaking and as pale as the snow, Marcus just concentrates on getting the world to stop moving. Suddenly a warm hand is on his face, “Here, you poor thing, this will help,”

Marcus can just barely see by the blurry blue light of the king’s wings, something in front of his lips. It smells sweet, and looks like some kind of raisin. “What is that?”

“The best pain killer unknown to man. Ordinarily its proportion is too small for you to bother with, but it’s been enlarged with me, and it’ll do the trick, take the edge off until dear Esca gets back to take care of you.”

Marcus opens his lips, and Liathan starts to push the seed in but is interrupted by the thunderous roar of a Jeep clearing a snow drift at 70 miles per hour and blasting its horn, lights as bright as day purging Marcus of the spell that had its hooks in him.

“What the f—“ He knocks Liathan’s hand away from him, spitting, though the seed had not entered his mouth. Still, he cannot believe it. He almost _fell for it_! He looks to his knight in shining four-wheel drive. “ESCA!”

Marcus shouts and cheers. Liathan snarls and retreats quickly from the metal contraption headed his way. Marcus howls into the night, saved,

“THAT’S RIGHT BABY! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! YES!” Marcus’ stomach drops. “NO!” Esca’s going too fast! There’s ice! When Esca tries to stop, the wheels lock down but the vehicle does not. It spins out of his control, missing Marcus by _feet_ , before slamming broadside into a tree.

“Esca!” Marcus shouts.

The door squeaks open, and out hops the man Marcus loves shrouded in all of the clothes they had left scattered in the floor. Esca’s wearing Marcus’ old coat, and the worn jeans are falling off of him, but he hikes them up one handed as he hefts the shotgun to his shoulder. Marcus can see that in place of mittens, he is wearing Marcus’ wool socks, which make his hold on the weapon a little awkward, but it does not stop him from pulling the trigger, which he does without hesitating.

BLAM!

A tree trunk explodes, but not Liathan. Esca is thrown back a step by the kick. “Close!” Marcus shouts, impressed, because it is not like Esca’s ever touched a modern weapon before now. In retaliation, that same _something_ which had erupted from the evil fae and threw Marcus into the sky, bursts from the streak of blue light that is the new king, who is headed straight for Marcus the long way, to avoid the Jeep. Esca pumps the new shot into the barrel and takes aim again.

“You got this. Hold it tighter against your shoulder,” Marcus advises quickly, “and _squeeze_ the trigger, don’t _pull_ it!”

VRACK-KLACK

The magic hits like lightning and Marcus covers his ears and eyes. When he looks again, there is a crater next to Esca, who has not flinched. Carefully, he points the barrel over Marcus’ head, and pulls the trigger again.

BLAM!

Marcus’ heart stops. Something small and sharp digs into his face, like a couple of sharp teeth, and then something heavy hits the ground behind him. It is not until the blue light is gone that Marcus even realizes it was close enough to illuminate his immediate surroundings. He twists around to peer into the pitch black. The headlights are shining uselessly into the forest.

“MARCUS!” Esca shouts. There is the sound of scrambling boots over crunching snow, and then Esca descends on Marcus with no shotgun in his hands.  “Oh, my Marcus, by gods! What were you thinking?” he grabs the front of Marcus’ shirt and shakes him. “YOU WERE ABOUT TO EAT IT!”

“I—“ Marcus starts but he has no words. He cannot explain it even if he could speak beyond the multitudes of relief he is drowning in right now. He is alive. Esca did not shoot him! Esca is back! He’s human! They can go home, to WARMTH! “I,” he tries again, but Esca is kissing him.

When the deep, possessive gesture breaks, Esca shakes him again. “If I had been but a moment late! Oh, fuck, you scared me to death! You literally almost _killed_ me!”

“Me?” Marcus finds his voice to ask incredulously. He throws a hand at the jeep. “Coming from the guy who almost ran me over and then _shot at me_!”

“I was saving your miserable life!” Esca says with a strong undertone of affection. He stops as if suddenly reminded that he needs to breathe. Marcus realizes that Esca is shaking, but it could just be from the cold. Esca swallows. “If I had lost you...”

“You might still. I need to get inside.”

“Right! Hurry, my Marcus, my love. Here—the splint—“ With common sense, and as much he can remember from a first aid video Marcus saw in school, they splint the leg with his walking stick and socks, but it doesn’t make it feel magically better like the movies would have it seem. Esca reaches for him. “Up you go. I have the heat on.”

Marcus snorts. “You took the time to figure out the heater?”

“I multitasked. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the whole thing. They really make you wait 16 years before you get to drive these things?”

“Well, mostly it’s to make sure you can see over the wheel,” Marcus says, straining through the pain as Esca helps him to his feet. “Which I guess you managed to do, but just barely, right?”

“Piss off,” Esca huffs, squeezing him affectionately. It is an impossible seven feet to the nearest jeep door, with Marcus dragging the dead leg between them, but they make it because suddenly having the whole world to share with Esca is enough to make even someone as solid as Marcus as light as air.

Once he is in the passenger’s seat, Esca shuts the door. Away from the wind and the sleet that has begun to fall, Marcus already feels degrees warmer. He holds his hands to the vents, shaking uncontrollably.

Esca scrambles into the driver’s seat and throws a blanket over Marcus. It is heavenly warm. The jeep starts moving at a vastly safer pace than its arrival. Esca is on the edge of the seat, hanging from the top of the wheel, his mouth open as he lets the car roll forward. Once he is facing the general direction he wants to go, he punches it.

Marcus shouts in pain when an unexpected bump sends him off his seat, onto his leg.

“Sorry,” Esca whines. “Sorry. Sorry. We’ll be out of the woods in a moment, hold on.”

“It’s fine,” Marcus grits through his teeth, clutching his leg. “Just go. I need the ER.”

“Where’s the nearest hospital?”

Marcus presses a numb finger into the console and a screen lights. “Hospital,” he shudders at it.

The GPS begins to give directions to the one in town, thirty minutes away. Esca looks impressed, if not a little freaked out by the machine and its pleasant female voice. With Marcus’s helpful tips, Esca gets on the road without spinning out of control again.

With smooth road under them, everything seems to slow down, despite the landscape flying by out the windows. Marcus watches Esca drive with his tongue between his teeth, occasionally getting confused between the wipers and the indicators.

“I didn’t mean to,” Marcus says softly. His eyes feel heavy but he wants to say this before he lets himself pass out from pain and exhaustion. “I don’t know what happen. I wasn’t thinking. He was tricking me, he said he was going to save us, and before I knew it—“

“Shh,” Esca glances from the road briefly with a small smile. “I’ve told you a hundred times, dearest. It’s the fae way. We trick and lure. You couldn’t help it.”

“If he hadn’t moved my leg like he did—said he was trying to help, giving me his shoes—and it hurt _so bad_. I couldn’t think of anything but the pain, and he promised the seed would make it go away, so I would have....I _would have_ eaten it and been his...” The shudder that racks his body is not from defrosting, but from horror. He would have willingly eaten it, even after all the warnings, even after he did not want it anymore because Esca was not fae anymore.

Esca reaches over and grips his hand, hushing him, “It’s over now. Just rest.”

“Don’t crash,” Marcus slurs. “You need to rest too. You’ve been through a lot.... You just killed someone,” he adds almost as an afterthought.

“He was a bad someone,” Esca says to the windshield. “And now my people won’t suffer under his reign. That was what I was afraid of or I would have become human a long time ago, maybe even before you were born. Anyway... I’ll rest when we get there. I promise.”

“You’re human now.”

“I am,” Esca says softly in wonderment.

“I can’t believe it, look at you.”

“I know. I feel so strange.”

“It’s called the human condition. You’ll get used to it.” Marcus puts a hand on his leg. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I—remind me to thank you later. Big time.”

“Sleep, Marcus.”

Esca starts to sing. His voice sounds different somehow, but it still effectively lulls him to slumber. He reclines the seat, tucks himself in, and drops into a dreamless sleep, the last thing he sees before his eyelids defeat him: Esca in jeans and muddy coat, fiddling with the car radio.

}{

Marcus wakes because he lurches forward to the sound of tires sliding and then someone lays frantically on a horn. Marcus groans and holds his head. The horn is too close. Go away. Sudden change in temperature and Marcus vaguely connects it to a car door opening. Then hands gently shaking him; maybe not so gently. Voices come to him through water.

“What happened?”

“…leg… bleeding…. Help…. Just help him!”

“…Unconscious… a gurney!...”

Someone tries to move his leg. With a shout, Marcus opens his eyes. There are two dashboards. Two worlds. It is _really_ hot in here. No air. He feels like he is going to be sick again.

“Marcus?” asks an unfamiliar voice close to him. He looks and finds a man in scrubs smiling at him. He is thin with a big nose, dark hair. “Hey, Marcus, can you hear me? You’re at the hospital. That leg looks bad we need to get you in fast. Do you think you can help us get you down into this gurney?”

“Marcus?” That’s Esca’s voice and he realizes that the hand in his is Esca’s. He turns and sees two Esca’s, two steering wheels, “Marcus?”

Then more hands have a hold of him, gripping him and pulling him backwards out of the cab. He shouts in pain as his leg is jostled but then he is thumping onto a gurney and blacking out momentarily.

He opens his eyes to bright lights overhead and Esca’s hand in his and Esca’s voice saying, “… his boyfriend. I’m not leaving him!”

“Sorry,” they say, “family only…. Wait here.”

The gurney keeps going forward, Esca’s hand stops and is pulled from Marcus’s by distance. Esca is cursing in Gaelic at the people blocking his way further down this hallway.

“Esca’s mine,” Marcus tries to tell the men pushing his gurney but his voice is weak and the effort makes his head swim. Someone sticks a thing into his arm.

}{

_“Marcus, so good to hear from you!”_

_“Hi, Uncle,” Marcus put a smile into his voice. Easy to do, snuggled up warm on his couch and the waning crescent moon was tonight. “How are you?”_

_“I’m well. Your timing is perfect. I just got out of a meeting and have the rest of the afternoon to myself.”_

_“Good. What about this weekend?” he asked, “Think I can come visit you day after tomorrow?”_

_“Of course you can!” Uncle cried, “I would love it. What’s brought this on?”_

_“Ah, just need to get out and have a change of scenery. Shake it up,” Marcus was not going to say that he needed a distraction from the ache of being left behind. Again. “I’ve had writer’s block, so I don’t know. Maybe this will help.”_

_“Yes, by all means. You know I love having you around... Is, ah, Esca joining you?”_

_Marcus had prepared for it so said, “No. He’s…” He had prepared a whole thing about a last minute business trip, but just then lost all energy to sell it and sighed instead, “Well, I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be together. So…”_

_“Oh, Marcus, that’s a shame. Even without meeting him I know how much you—“_

_“Let’s not talk about it.” Marcus cut in pleadingly. “Maybe it’s just a rough stretch. We might figure it all out.”_

_“Well,” Uncle’s voice is firm and authoritative, smiling, “Come stay with me for a week or two. Get some sun, catch a few games. Don’t even think about your book or Esca. Take a break from it all.”_

_“Sounds good.”_

_“Have you booked a flight, or can I send the jet?”_

_Marcus laughed, “Well, I called so you would send the jet. I would have just surprised you with a visit if I wanted to travel like a middle class citizen.”_

_Uncle laughed, “Okay. The jet it is, then.”_

}{

Marcus opens his eyes to find people around his bed. They smile at him, hand him a cup of water. His leg is immovable, splinted and in traction. He cannot feel anything. Not a single thing. He might as well not have a body. A woman in a white coat says, “You did a number on that leg. What were you doing?”

It takes a minute for Marcus to answer simply, “I fell.” His voice is croaky and he clears his throat.

The doctor does not look convinced but seems slightly amused, “That’s what the man who brought you in says—your boyfriend?”

“Where is he?”

“In the waiting room. Only family members are allowed to visit patients, Mr. Aquila.”

Marcus sighs, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him. Isn’t that good enough?”

The doctor smiles, “Well, he didn’t know the first thing about filling out your medical history for us, so he’s going to stay where he is. Now, about your leg; we need to do surgery, put in pins and plates or you’ll never walk again. That bone was done for, Mr. Aquila.”

Marcus’ stomach swoops, “But I will walk again, right? I mean, after you fix everything?’

"It won’t be easy, but yeah.”

Marcus breathes easier.

“You know, I have to say. The X-rays are…” she fishes for a word and lands on, “gruesome. One only sees such things on cadavers.”

Marcus—being numb to all the gruesome pain—smiles, “ _Cool_.”

She nods, “I’ll get you some copies; it really is something to see, let alone to survive. Actually, it’s my medical opinion to have that kind of damage in a simple fall, it should have been a fall that also killed you, opened your skull, snapped your back, etc. Yet the rest of you hasn’t a single scratch--well,” She eyes him head to toe, eyes ligering on his cheekbone, "Except for the peice of buckshot in your cheek."

Marcus reaches up and touches a bandage on his face, squirms and says, “Ain’t life a kick in the head?”

She cracks into a smile and hands over a clipboard with a sigh as if she is resigned never to know what he did to his leg, “We’ve stopped the bleeding and set as much of the bone as we can by hand but like I said, you need surgery and we need a history. So if you can fill out these forms.”

“I want to see Esca, first.”

With another sigh, the doctor concedes and gives him privacy.

When the short frame of Esca appears, swamped in a mismatch of Marcus’s clothes, all Marcus can do is cry, “Esca!” And Esca rushes to the bed and grabs Marcus, asking how he feels.

“I’m okay,” Marcus promises, “Don’t feel a thing anymore. But what about you?” He pulls back and studies him in wonder. Esca looks different. Smells different, too. The metallic taste of magic is gone. The air around him does not feel magnetic anymore. He is just… a guy. A cute guy with water standing in his eyes, smiling at him as he holds onto him. Marcus touches his face, skin that does not seem to glow from within anymore, “You’re…” Esca nods and Marcus puts their foreheads together, “How does it feel?”

“Mostly horrible so far, but better now,” Esca answers truthfully in a huff. “Everything feels wrong but this…” he bumps their noses, “This doesn’t. It feels even better.”

Marcus laughs, “It does, doesn’t it?” He exhales, “Christ, I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“I told you I love you more than anything,” Esca whispers.

“I didn’t believe you, I guess,” Marcus whispers back. He draws a deep breath and sits back, “Listen, they have to do surgery. Be here when I wake up.”

“Where else am I going to go?”

“Right. Just don’t wander off. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

**Epilogue**

Esca walks down the center of a florescent, disinfected hallway. With each step Marcus’ boots clod and flop hollowly on the over-waxed tiles. The excess space in them makes Esca’s bare toes feel sweaty and gross. He’s already getting blisters.

He has removed a jacket and a sweater and tied the second securely around his waist so that the baggy jeans would stop trying to fall to his ankles. The flannel pajama shirt he had dragged on before the sweater is soft with use and, of all the clothes Esca wears now, smells the most like Marcus.

Sitting in one of the padded chairs, he hugs the shirt to him and wonders at how alone he can feel without the tingle of magic clinging to him and connecting him, as if by an elastic web, to all the trees and rocks and fae. He is by himself. Single. Floating around with no anchor, no path. Anything can happen.

His fingers shake.

Disembodied voices crackle overhead, phones ring, people come and go. It feels wrong not to be able to sense if the people around him are well or not. To not know where they come from. Or if they are decent or not. These people could be anybody. They could be up to _anything_. Or they could be god-knows-what and only _pretending_ to be people.

How do humans do this?

Esca nervously cracks his knuckles in his hands and reminds himself that nothing too bad could possibly be inside this hospital because of all the metal, and bad humans—though bad—probably do not have anything against him at the moment so he is in the clear. Still, though, he feels so… _vulnerable_.

He tenses every time someone in the hallway passes the little alcove where the waiting room is located. He thinks, every single time, that it is someone coming to tell him something about how the surgery has gone. But no.

His back hurts.

Pain, for Esca, has only ever been a momentary thing. There in a flash, never lingering. Not like this. The pain of cutting away his wings seems to have reflected there and gotten stuck. Like it has wormed under his skin to stay awhile. Restless, Esca goes to the restroom and takes a quick peek under the shirt, finds two thick, red lines crossing on his back. Esca knows scars when he sees them, but he has never seen them on himself. They are such a _mortal_ thing to have.

He does not like the way they mar the otherwise perfect expanse of his sloping, toned back. He drops the shirt back over them and tries not to let his eyes sting at the thought of never feeling Marcus’s breath on his wings again.

}{

_They will learn together that the scars on Esca’s back still hold in them some wispy remnants of the pleasure which his used to get out of his wings. Marcus will kiss every inch of these scars and run his tongue on either side of the deadened flesh, applying just a little pressure here and there that will make Esca shudder and ask for more._

_Marcus will draw him up and press his chest to the scars. His big hands will slide around Esca’s hips, and one will wrap around his cock and the other will splay across his chest to hold him tight. The pressure on his scars will be perfect with the friction on his cock and he will want even more, which Marcus will give by sliding his fingers through the initial resistance of that pucker of skin and prodding the right spot._

_Esca will learn that pleasure now is closer to pain, because pleasure is tied so closely to life and life is perpetually draining out of this mortal body. Marcus’s body sliding in his will make him_ feel _the life leaving him and it will feel like… it will feel like it is going somewhere good. For a moment, just a moment, death will not be unknown. Death will be bliss which Marcus will bring him closer to, make him beg for._

}{

Someone comes into the restroom, stops when they see Esca at the sink, looks him up and down and then looks away quickly, hurries into a stall without further acknowledgment of him. Esca knows it is the clothes; he must look homeless.

He attempts to make his hair lie flat and in doing so realizes that his ears _hurt_ when touched. He leans over the sink, pushes away his unruly hair and examines the lobes in the mirror, gives a horrified gasp at what he finds. The stranger comes out of the stall and does not even wash his hands but leaves quickly because Esca has crawled up onto the sink, fingering the mangled cartilage that he has where he used to have tender skin tapering up into sharp points which had helped him sense the magic. “No, no, no,” he is saying frantically to himself.

But it is. Where Marcus has perfectly round-shaped lobes, Esca has flesh that looks to have tightened up too much and curled in on itself like shriveled citrus peels. They are not human ears; at least not normal ones.

Will Marcus love them?

Esca’s breaths stilt and stutter out of him at the idea of being not just a human, but an imperfect one, deformed and dying. How is that good enough for someone as perfectly formed as Marcus?

}{

_They’ll be at the home they share near Marcus’s Uncle, in bed and watching as the evening sunlight illuminates the glass of the building across the street. Marcus will run his hands through the stubby cowlicks of Esca’s hair and lightly squeeze a disfigured lobe where they tell people he has a ‘birth defect.’_

_“I shouldn’t have gotten that haircut.” Esca will mumble, regretting that he ever fell prey to magazine pictures that made him feel like his hair was about two hundred years out of style._

_“They’re kinda cute,” Marcus will reassure, breath warm on the twisted cartilage of his ear, “I like them.”_

_“Don’t have to make shit up to make me feel better,” Esca will say. “I know they look stupid.” He’ll have to learn like all children with birth defects do, to accept the way he looks. To let go of insecurities and love the way he is because it’s unique and beautiful. Marcus will help him._

_“They really don’t.” Marcus will say resolutely as he pulls Esca over on top of him. Esca will mind not to kick the cast on Marcus’s leg as he gets between his thighs. Marcus will grin up at him, bucking playfully, “Makes you look human.”_

_“I_ am _human.”_

_“I know you are,” Marcus will surge up and grab him in a deep kiss and break it to say through a big smile, “And so am I.”_

}{

Esca has promised Marcus he will rest, and so Esca intends to. A nurse gives him a pillow, and he curls up in one of the waiting room chairs watching the news on the TV bolted to the wall. Sleep is different now. It is heavier, and darker, and when he jumps awake hours later, he feels older and a little sick.

“Mr. Esca?” a nurse asks kindly. She was the one to wake him with a nudge to the shoulder, and withdraws her hand quickly like he might bite. Esca sees her eyes flick over his mangled ears, so he self-consciously flattens his hair and clears his throat. “What time is it?”

“It’s just after noon. Marcus is out of surgery and has been asking for you.”

“Oh! My Marcus!” Esca springs to his feet. It is a sudden and graceful movement, but he feels a stiffness in his back and legs that is new and troubling. The boots are forgotten, kicked under his seat where he left them, so in Marcus’ overlarge wooly socks which he'd put on to help with the blisters, Esca slides to a stop at the corner to look back and ask the nurse, “what room is he?”

She is smiling, almost giggling, and says kindly, enviously, “ _Your Marcus_...Room 322.”

The door is open, and Marcus looks up when he enters. Esca is stopped dead in his tracks because Marcus’ smile is not a surprised or enchanted one, is simply a smile for something familiar, something _not_ ethereal.

“Hi, baby, just wake up?” Marcus asks even as his eyes slide back to the TV in the corner, “They said you fell asleep out there.” And he’s not rendered speechless either.

Fear grips Esca. Already, things are wrong. So wrong. He stands in the doorway, ringing his hands. Concern knits Marcus’ brow and he looks back at him. “Esca? What’s the matter?”

“I’m not beautiful anymore. I do not capture you.”

Marcus looks aghast, and seems to laugh at himself in astonishment. Then he shakes his head, and smiles smugly at Esca. “Well, that’s because you’ve already captured me. We humans can only do it once. First impression. Bam!”

“And is this really the best I can do? I walk into a room, and you only glance away from the television, ask me mundane questions.”

“Esca get over here.”

Sighing, Esca drags the heavy socks across the cold floor to the side of the bed, and Marcus pulls him down to sit at his hip.

“This is not your first impression on me. Remember last night? How you roared onto the page in my jeep, jumped out with a twelve gage, blew an evil monster to kingdom come, and _saved my life_? You had my socks on your hands,” Marcus chuckles, plucking at the evidence of layers on Esca. “And my pants were falling off you--and the look on your face when we both knew we were alright...gods, I’m never going to forget that.”

Tingles are sharp in Esca’s fingertips, like the magic is back, only it is just the words Marcus is saying. The room is filled with sunlight and the most alluring aroma Esca has ever inhaled.

“What is this?” Esca asks with a dry throat. He can smell the water in the plastic pitcher on the table, and the plate of food waiting on a tray in front of Marcus is mouth-watering. His tongue feels thick and scratchy. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in seventy-two years.”

“Hungry?” Marcus asks with a huff. He picks up a fork. “You have to eat every day now. No more eighty year fasts becuase you haven't kept track of what time it is. And here, perfect; breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

Esca takes a large bite of the flapjack, and his scar flushes hot on his back. “Mmm! By the feats of fae, that is good! Scoot over, love. Are you eating this?”

Marcus laughs, surrendering the fork, which is surprisingly cold and heavy, nothing like the plastic utensils in the cabin. “Take it!”

}{

_They will eat food from all over the world, from every new five star restaurant. Marcus will buy them both ridiculously fine suits to wear to these establishments and they’ll sit across from each other and toast fine wine as they murmur jokes and chuckle over the cuisine. Marcus will reach over the table cloth and take Esca’s hand or slide around the booth seat to snuggle in close. Esca will love going to dinner with Marcus, the music and the shiny shoes and the sexy ties and the orgasmic food… but for the rest of their lives, Esca will tell people his favorite food ever is hospital food._

}{

With a stomach full of pancakes, Esca ends up falling asleep on Marcus’s shoulder half way through a show about people who cannot sing thinking they can and being told they cannot. He wakes up when Marcus talks to someone who is not him. He vaguely realizes it is someone on the phone. Marcus’s voice is too thick and slurred together for Esca to understand what he is saying but it does not matter. Marcus’s heart beat is under his ear, his fingers are in his hair, swirling softly. So comforting.

“What? No, yeah, yeah, Uncle. Don’t worry about it. We talked it all out. Everything’s perfect again. Even better than it was actually. He loves me like I love him. Everything’s going to be alright. Sorry I can't make it to visit you after all...”

Esca sleeps.

}{

_He will learn what it’s like to wake up with Marcus. Not just in hospital beds but in air plane seats, cars, trains and even opera seats. But mostly in bed, their bed. Tangled sheets, missing pillows, cold outside the blankets. Marcus next to him, spooning a giant pillow with one leg thrown up over it, snoring lightly, old t-shirt twisted up his back._

_Esca will sometimes wake up with aches and pains, feeling older, like the hours he just spent unconscious are precious time he will never get back. That will sometimes make him moody and unwilling to smile or laugh or have any fun at all. Marcus will be offended. They will fight. Throw things._

_Not talk to each other for a whole weekend._

_Cry._

_Esca will be afraid; the unknown of death will make his fingers shake and he will think he will do anything not to die. He will curl up with Marcus and they will talk about it, philosophize about the afterlife, religions of the world, their love and what it all means. Marcus will promise that he is scared, too. That everyone is._

_“But,” Marcus will say, “I’ve sort of started to think that, when I die, I’ll just come back to here.”_

_“Here?” Esca will echo._

_“Sure. It’s all kind of what you were saying, isn’t it? Love lasts forever after death. This moment will be a memory. And maybe, when we die, we’ll live in these moments. You know, build a house out of them. A never-ending loop. Living the joy over and over again.”_

_“Put it like that and death isn’t so bad.”_

_“Nope,” Marcus will say and Esca will curl into him and hold him tight._

_Despite the occasional odd dark mood, in the end, Esca will never, ever, regret what he did for Marcus._

}{

 

THE END


End file.
